NYCLU says Rensselaer County GOP seeks to intimidate voters

Phoebe Sheehan/Albany Times UnionSteve McLaughlin speaks with attendees during Datto's new company launch on Thursday, April 4, 2019 in East Greenbush, NY. (Phoebe Sheehan/Times Union)

Lori Van Buren/Albany Times UnionDemocratic elections commissioner Edward McDonough reads out loud absentee ballots for the election of Rensselaer County for the 107th Assembly District at the Rensselaer County Board-Elections office on Friday, April 27, 2018 in Troy, N.Y. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

TROY – Rensselaer County records show that county Republican officials had no reasons for saying they would hand over documents to federal immigration officials to check to see if undocumented immigrants were illegally registered to vote, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

The county GOP position is all about intimidating people from registering to vote, said Perry Grossman, the NYCLU’s senior attorney for its voting rights project.

“It’s clear there was not legitimate reasoning behind it. The whole point of the press release is to scare people with the threat of ICE investigating it they registered to vote at DMV,” Grossman said Friday.

After the Times Union reported in mid-July on the announcement by County Executive Steven McLaughlin of the planned sharing of voting registration records with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the NYCLU filed Freedom of Information requests for county records.

“The response from the County to our FOIL shows that GOP county officers are simply grandstanding and deploying intimidation tactics in the wake of the Green Light Bill. They have recorded no concern this year over non-citizen voting, and discussed no plans for addressing it,” the NYCLU said.

County Republicans opposed the state’s Green Light law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to let undocumented immigrants apply for driver licenses. The law, effective in December, also prevents ICE from accessing driver's license application records and allows the Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner to not retain them after six months -- but doesn't specifically bar county Boards of Elections from sharing information.

The county later filed a federal lawsuit with County Clerk Frank Merola as plaintiff in U.S. District Court in Albany seeking to declare the new state law unconstitutional.

“We are going to withhold comment due to the ongoing litigation,” Richard Crist, a spokesman for McLaughlin, said Friday when asked about the NYCLU’s comments.

The NYCLU said it found there was “no record that county officers communicated with ICE about sharing data.” NYCLU said the matter also was never voted upon nor discussed by the bipartisan county Board of Elections.

County Democrats, including Democratic Elections Commissioner Edward McDonough, said they learned of the Republican stance after they were contacted by the Times Union.